Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

[flagged]


> All of medical science still imagines a world where humans are in "God's shape", denying the fact that we are machines made of systems of smaller machines.

No, it’s that these systems of systems are so incredibly complex that we still don’t understand many of them deeply. And misunderstanding the relationships of systems leads to major side effects and unpredictability.

If we understood these systems then we wouldn’t have vague success rates on things like drugs or surgeries - we’d be able to say “based on all of these factors this is the treatment that works for you”. But we can’t do that, instead we have trials and shrug and say “it works for most people so it’s worth using”


> We could clone headless humans and have factories full of them. Transplants could cure all but brain cancer. Reverse aging too.

We literally couldn't do this if we wanted to


Agreed, this is just dumb and really really hard. Much easier to genetically modify animals like pigs or cows to make compatible blood.


You cant just replace and expect to solve issues.

- tissue rejection - viruses can and do change cell level machinery - cascading malfunctions of small things can have large results

Then theres the ethics of cloning humans and keeping them in a factory. No religion or superstition in this statement, but if theres consciousness or the possibility thereof then this is absolutely monstrous.


Developing a blood substitute for emergency transfusions seems like a 100X more tractable problem.



since we're making things up -- why don't we just spin up a program that trains a bunch of novice clerics to cast Cure Disease?


Your HN username should be in the dictionary under “Dunning-Kruger”.


loooool




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: